Life, Leadership and Business

Sunday, 28 February 2016

The secret to
successfully living an authentic life is congruence. Congruence implies that we
should have a straight line of agreement between vision, goals and behaviour.
See the “Authenticity: The Pudding of Congruence” Blog Post. As basic as the
concept of a straight line may be, it does require some conscious focus and
attention. The concept is equal to the wheel alignment on an eighteen wheel
truck. To move a heavy vehicle safely and
efficiently we need all the wheels to be balanced, correctly inflated and all
pointed in the same direction.

Our lives can easily be represented by the eighteen wheeler
truck rig:

The cab with the driver would represent our focus and vision
in life. Sitting at the front of the vehicle our whole life will follow the
course we select from in the cab.

The Trailer would represent how we contain life, with all
our own personality, attitude and emotions. What happens in life only has the
meaning that we give it, and that is determined by our overall attitude to
life.

The Wheels represent all the different roles that we play in
life. Each of us is multi-dimensional in the tasks and duties we have to
perform and are represented by diverse roles that we take on. Let’s look at
Jack for example: He is a dad, he is a friend, he is a son and a brother, and
he is a fisherman, runner and businessman.

It is called life when we live out each of the roles we
have, achieving goals, learning skills, socialising and connecting with others.As each role rolls over the tar of life and
circumstances we travel closer to our destination. The signposts along the
route indicate the goals and achievements that draw us closer to our purpose.

It is important that the roles in our lives are congruent,
inline, to the direction we wish to travel. In twenty five years of life coaching and presenting
courses, I regularly find people that have roles and goals that are incongruent
with each other. I have met people with conflicting roles, where one role
breaks down what another role achieves. I can only compare this to a truck where
the front wheels are driven forwards, but the back wheels role in the opposite
direction. This will result in stagnation and a lot of damage to the vehicle.

Take some time to discover the roles you lay in your life.
Take some time to identify how they affect your life and your goals. Most
importantly, take time to discover if these roles are congruent with where you
want to go in life. Getting these various roles to align with your vision is a
basic but essential step to achieving the success you want in your life. Owning
an eighteen wheeler truck rig is a privilege for living. Regular and thorough maintenance
of this rig is important to a safe and successful journey. Happy Travels,
Trucker!

Saturday, 27 February 2016

Buzzwords come and go
in the fields of leadership and personal development. ‘Mindfulness’ is the
latest word to slip into blog titles and development memes. ‘Authenticity’ is
another word doing the rounds as authors play with its role connecting leaders
to a higher calling. Yet strangely, there is a word that is powerfully
connected to authenticity that is missing. As the strong undercurrent, this
word lends purpose and force to authenticity. This word is Congruence.

The tired truck driver battles to keep his eighteen wheeler
rig between the lines on the highway. Controlling the sway and wandering is
made difficult by the fact that one trailer wheel is flat and the general
alignment is out. Besides the expense and increased wear and tear on the
vehicle, misaligned wheels are dangerous. The vehicle will not run true as
wayward wheels pull it in all directions, making safe handling difficult. The
driver must be alert and quick to correct the vehicle’s drifting ways. This
works when the driver is fresh and focused, but becomes risky as the hours and
miles slip by.

Tuesday, 23 February 2016

The
Top-Down Effect has confused and baffled leaders, managers and development
consultants for years. It is simple in its form yet produces powerful effects. It
is a phenomenon that naturally occurs in the business environment that can
either make or break culture and brand strategies. The Top-Down Effect silently
strips away the layers of jargon and ideals within a company to reveal the
authentic intent and style of those at the top of the organization.

Monday, 22 February 2016

A colleague
recently worked with a small Pharmaceutical Company to raise the level of
leadership amongst their management. He says he knew it was going to be difficult
after he learned that the top management had paid a marketing agency to design
the company's values. The management handed him a marketing brief with four popular
value words on it saying - "this is the image we want to portray."

Friday, 19 February 2016

There is no doubt that there is a science to management that
takes time to master. The demands from industry forced pioneering managers to
take up the role of leader too. This thrusts a set of 3-balls to juggle in to prospective
entrepreneurs' hands that are still trying to navigate their way through the
terrors of marketing, branding, culture building in the circus of digital
business.

"Leadership" was not a term forced onto grumpy
autocratic managers to make them more likeable. Rather, the ability was
recognised and noted as masses started to follow key individuals that shaped
our history. As an entrepreneur, I don't mind telling you that I think the role
of manager is easier to master than it is to quantify the role of leadership.

It is difficult to teach old dogs to engage in the lives of
those they manage, but it is even harder to groom authentic leadership. This is
the 4th ball potential leaders need to learn to juggle. Authentic leadership is
complex at the best of times. It is a difficult concept to apply in the work
place when faced with crisis demanding immediate attention, mixed in with
employees' livelihood at risk. The general feeling is that leadership is better
approached by people that have personal authenticity as part of their own
development. This, however, seems to put a limit on who is eligible for the
leadership role.

This would back up the concept that leaders are born and not
bred. As much as I agree that leadership cannot be taught in a classroom, I am
uncomfortable siding with a concept that leadership is nothing more than
gene

tic disposition. Genetics may add flair and flamboyance to the personality
of certain leaders, as in the case of Martin Luther King, Richard Branson, Israel's
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, or even the late charismatic Nelson Mandela.
This genetic charisma is not a set criterion for leadership otherwise we would
not have seen great leaders like Mahatma Gandhi.

Even though the exact recipe to develop outstanding leaders
may elude scholars for the moment, the role of current leaders in grooming the
next generation is essential. Not just in the sense of them mentoring interns
that have worked their way up the corporate ladder, but at grass root level -
get involved with children. As adults, experienced leaders and entrepreneurs we
need to advocate the idea of authentic leadership to the children of now and
their parents. Leaders and business people need to promote self discovery, drive
the value of leadership development courses and programs and inspire kids to
take up the torch of being authentic.

We need to engage people in authentic self expression at a
very basic level, developing a sense of self worth and a healthy respect for
others. The future of authentic leadership depends on the ability of current
leaders to successfully implement the philosophy, and ignite the next
generation with passion to continue forward. This would be like taking a child
to the circus at a young age, and when the show is over, to go back stage and
give him or her first hand experience at juggling. It will ignite an unquenchable
fire to practice juggling with three and four balls into the late hours of
night. Whether with flair or with a quiet determination, when their opportunity
arrives to perform in front of a crowd, people will beam with admiration and praise believing such skill
must be a talent with which they were born.

Wednesday, 17 February 2016

Some things work. Some things do! In my drive for getting to
that section of life I really want to be I am busy evaluating what works for me, and what
doesn’t. Things that don’t work I politely but decisively remove from my
thinking process (I will share some secrets with you on how to do that without
endless affirmations and mishaps in a future article!). Sometimes things work
partially and need some adjustment. One
such principle I have adjusted to better suit me and my way of thinking is the
(in)famous goal setting aide called S.M.A.R.T. This acronym is used to evaluate
a goal set. It is a way to test the comprehensive development of a goal once it
has been set.

Until I started putting my own twist on it, SMART did not
work for me. The new SMARTY is dynamic and living. I use it not to evaluate the goal once I have
defined it, I USE IT TO DEFINE THE GOAL AS I SET IT. May I share this twisted
SMARTY version of goal setting with you.

Tuesday, 16 February 2016

Watching a lady dress can help us understand authenticity.
Consider that this task happens in front of a mirror, even if she doesn't
actually look at her reflection most of the time. First, cream is smeared to cover her whole
body. Then, meticulously she covers her silky skin in layers of clothes, each primed
and inspected from multiple angles. She makes tiny adjustments to have the
garment sit comfortably and look exquisite.

Monday, 15 February 2016

An interesting phenomenon occurred amongst the 'WWJD'(What
Would Jesus Do?) bracelet owners. The point of the bracelet was for the person
wearing it to be reminded to consider what Jesus would do in the same situation
that faced the bracelet owner. Those that stopped to ponder the question seemed
to access what they themselves felt, the emotions experienced in the situation
at that moment, and compared it to a set of values they believed were
God-given, or at the very least - the moral high-ground.

With personal religious feelings aside, one has to
acknowledge that this practice assisted the individuals to experience
authenticity on a very personal level. Consider that, although knowing who we
are, what our values are and what we want out of life is important, being
authentic requires us to weight those things against how we actually feel in
the moment.

Thursday, 11 February 2016

Seething anger and the sickening feeling of helplessness! The two emotions that hijacked victims must overcome in order to move forward in life. This article is not about the potentially lethal car hijacking. Although this form is very rife in my country, this article is about a less dangerous form of hijacking, but no less invasive.

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I am here to stir the potential that is in you! I want you to engage in the rich wealth of happiness, success, health and wisdom that lies no more than a little skin deep. It's in you. Connect with me, to learn how to connect with all that you are and all that you have.